FILE - In this April 16, 2007, file photo, state and local police wait for a building to be cleared by police on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., following a shooting incident. Gun control advocates sputter at their own impotence. The National Rifle Association is politically ascendant. And Barack Obama’s White House pledges to safeguard the Second Amendment in its first official response to the deaths of at least 12 innocents in a mass shooting at a new Batman movie screening in suburban Denver. Once, every highly publicized outbreak of gun violence produced strong calls from Democrats and a few Republicans for tougher controls on firearms. Now those pleas are muted, a political paradox that’s grown more pronounced in an era scarred by Columbine, Virginia Tech, the wounding of a congresswoman and now the shootings in a suburban movie theater where carnage is expected on-screen only. (AP Photo/Don Petersen)